Letters to the editor

Published 4:00 am, Thursday, October 8, 2009

This is a response to the misuse of taxpayers funds by the president of the Board of Education, Kim-Shree Maufas ("Official's personal use of district credit," Oct. 4).

I am appalled by this and her lame excuses. This personally affects my child, who goes to a San Francisco public high school and has no textbooks. This was not a question that I thought of asking when she transferred from a private school. It was only after school was in session for a couple of weeks that I realized and was informed that they didn't have the funds for books - some classes and some students have them, but my daughter doesn't.

Being a taxpayer in San Francisco for the past 30 years and using the public school system for the first time, I feel cheated. I think the students are cheated and the teachers are cheated. Who else in the school system is abusing our funds? Is San Francisco a first-class city when the students don't have such basics as books?

2nd Amendment has limits

I do support the right of citizens to bear arms. I just can't find the phrase "without restriction" in the text of the Second Amendment." It seems to me that not selling ammunition, a potentially dangerous commodity, on the Internet is a very reasonable restriction. So is keeping track of firearms with micro-stamping.

All the other amendments under the Bill of Rights have limitations. Why is it that gun owners feel that the Second Amendment should be exempt?

Don't omit transsexuals

If the Healthy San Francisco health care plan is indeed "a potential model for the nation" ("Top court requests advice on S.F. plan," Oct. 6), I hope its specific exclusion of sex-reassignment surgery is dropped before it is adopted nationwide.

Palin won't go away

-- Should a former Alaska governor who abruptly resigned her office with 18 months remaining advise a sitting president (who's trying to make a thoughtful decision about an increase in troops for the war in Afghanistan) to not have "cold feet"?

-- Should the media continue to print "advice" from this self-described "rogue" politician who's clearly trying to keep her name in the news to pump up sales of her new memoir?

Moderates on top

My first reaction to Bob Egelko's article on Proposition 8 ("Intention of Prop. 8 is key to challenge," Oct. 3) was dismay at the accompanying photo: American River College students noisily endorsing the anti-gay proposition.

Not again! As an American River College faculty member, I've grown tired of having my school depicted as a bastion of bigotry. Then I realized it was an opportunity to bring things up to date. American River students repudiated the right-wing religious bloc that had seized control of the student government, and elected a more moderate student council. The incumbents were all but wiped out.

One hopes this means that campus issues will no longer be neglected in favor of narrow sectarian interests.

Shopping carts stolen. So?

One can sympathize, to a point, with those letter writers who object to shopping carts being taken by homeless people ("Rental carts?" Oct. 6).

But put yourself in the position of a homeless man or woman: You have no place to stash your things, you can't carry everything on your back, and for various reasons, you're desperate. So you take a shopping cart from some multibillion-dollar corporation, even though that's stealing.

Bottom line: If that's the most serious thing you think about in observing life in the city, how lucky for you.

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